Romanticism
by Fading Grace
Summary: Hiei has a very bad week and reflects on the nature of romanticism. Quite straightforward. SensuiHiei, KuramaYukina


Here. My pitiful offering, messed up twice when I actually tried to send it directly to the proper recipient. Well. It's a bit closer to alright now.

Er. Happy birthday, kiddo.

* * *

Heavy, stunned silence filled the kitchen.

The shorter of the two men said, "_What_?"

The others brushed back his long red hair. He had come in with resolve to say this. "I like Yukina. I am asking you, Hiei, to avoid killing me if it is within your power to do so."

Hiei closed his eyes and didn't remove major sections of his ex-friend's circulatory system. "You mean that you want to mate with her."

"Actually," Kurama said brightly, "the humans have devised a humorous alternative."

Hiei's expression clouded even further. "If your intentions leave her alone and burdened -"

"No. Hiei, you know me, I would never."

Hiei _did_ know him, so he took his hand away from where the hilt of his sword would have been in any society ruled by common sense.

Kurama explained, "The term is 'dating' and it means that we would have time to get to know each other before something as…permanent…as _mating_."

Hiei leaned back in his chair with suspicion in ever line. "If you're not _absolutely sure_, then why are you wasting my time?"

Kurama sighed. "I _am_ sure. Very sure. Beyond sure. But dating would give _her_ a chance to become sure. As it were."

Hiei picked up a glass, which immediately developed a broad, spider-webbed crack. He put the glass down again, frustrated and disgusted. "Why are you telling me?"

"So that you don't find out later, when it won't matter whether you know me or not." Kurama sighed again. "And you're a friend, for whatever that's worth. I wanted to tell you myself."

Hiei scowled, stood up with sharp, jerky motions, and stalked to the door. He paused with his hand on the door and said, without turning his head, "Better than that human waste of food."

"Now, now. Kuwabara's not so bad," Kurama said merrily.

Hiei snorted. "There are no words for how they will find your corpse should you hurt her." The door slammed as he left.

"I would never," Kurama murmured again.

Well. It could've gone much, much worse.

* * *

Hiei was training.

Actually, he was hacking a tree to pieces, but he couldn't bring himself to care for the difference.

He had gone from Kurama's house where he was staying in the human world, to Genkai's, as fast as he could. Of course, with everyone else here, it was more crowded and annoying, but that problem was solved with short words and long strides.

Now, Hiei was half a mile into the forest, cutting boulders and trees without using his spirit energy to vent the physical urge to massacre.

It was nearly dark when a voice said, "So. Even you can lose control of your temper."

Hiei stopped making matchsticks and swung around to aim a blow at the source of that voice. It had more force behind it than the others, and cleared a wide swathe of level ground.

The intruder was apparently fine. "You missed."

Hiei had no patience for this. "Shinobu Sensui."

The ex-Spirit Detective dropped from a branch to the ground, smirking. "Hello, demon."

Hiei moved his feet apart in a defensive stance, aimed the point of his sword at the taller man's stomach. "If you're looking for a fight, you've found one."

"No. Not a fight." Sensui nearly touched his ear to his shoulder to crack his neck in two places. "I would like to know – are you a good demon, or a bad one?"

"What does it matter? I'm a demon in the end."

Sensui shrugged. "If we fight, it will be sparring. Will you drop your sword, demon?"

Hiei weighed his options, slid the sword into its sheath and tossed it aside.

Sensui smiled beatifically. "I don't intend to kill you."

Hiei hissed, "Thanks for sharing!" and launched himself forward on the last word.

Sensui raised his knee, straightened his long, long leg, and nearly kicked Hiei in the face.

But Hiei had trained in martial arts specifically to let the shorter combatant come out the victor against the taller, and knew that trick. He ducked under the leg, and brought his shoulder up, hard, to put the enemy off-balance.

Sensui _was_ off-balance, teetering dangerously for a few seconds before swinging his weight around and aiming a punch for Hiei's head.

Hiei _hated_ the height-to-reach ratio. He was caught by the collar, levered up by a hand in his side, and slammed against a tree trunk.

Now his back ached, his side would probably bruise, and the wind had been knocked out of him. Hiei's fighting became sloppy when he was annoyed.

As he began to slip down the trunk, a thin, long hand held him up by the throat.

Sensui said, "Will you please tell me, now: Are you good? Uremeshi is under the impression that not all demons _or_ humans are evil. You fight alongside him. Are you, therefore, 'good'?"

Hiei didn't move or breathe. He could last a while without oxygen, but Sensui would snap his neck before he got close to that particular threshold.

Sensui tightened his grip anyway.

Hiei managed, "Neither."

"That's not acceptable," Sensui said clearly. He stood still for a moment, and then blinked. "No. We won't accept that."

"I don't care what you can't accept. Let me go."

Sensui's eyes refocused on his captive, and then on the gap between Hiei's feet and the leaf-mulch on the ground.

Hiei was holding onto Sensui's wrist to keep from slipping and crushing any important breathing parts.

Sensui observed, "You are short," and then let go.

In a crouch, back against the trunk, Hiei glared up at him, touching the tender skin beneath his chin.

And Sensui walked away into the forest.

* * *

As Hiei came back to Genkai's home, the moon was setting. His side wasn't bruised, but his neck was. Every step or movement of his arms stretched the scrapes on his back from the bark.

Self-righteousness was a pain for the sane people of the world.

He went in and was met with the disturbing sight of Kurama smiling at Yukina.

Luckily, Kurama saw him and retreated a few steps. Then, he saw the darkening fingerprints on his throat and came closer. Finally, he saw Hiei's expression and didn't ask.

"Well, I'm going to go home," he declared.

Hiei pointed his chin away. "I'll eat something and then follow you."

Kurama bowed tot the pretty girl at the center of the room. "Good night, Yukina." He smiled again _in that way_, and said, "I'm glad."

Yukina turned red and murmured something in return, and then he was gone.

And it was silent. In the background, behind the silence, Hiei picked out Genkai correcting stances. Training again.

Yukina volunteered, "That was…well, Kurama said that…he likes me. And wants to spend time with me."

Hiei had deduced as much.

"So…is that alright?" She blinked her brown eyes at him and smiled because she couldn't suppress the urge. "I mean, Kurama is your friend and you're _my_ friend and if you don't like it I won't."

Hiei didn't glare at her. He didn't move for long, long heartbeats.

Eventually, he snorted and moved toward the door to the small kitchen. "I don't care what you do. It's your business."

Even as he shut the door behind him, though, Hiei knew that she was smiling _in that way_, just like Kurama had been.

The smile of someone that wasn't his to protect anymore.

He threw the first thing he could get his hands on. It was a plastic cup, left out on the table there. After it rebounded off the wall, the water left in it splashed out nearly to his feet.

He opened and closed his fists a few times, and then found a towel and cleaned up.

* * *

Hiei was wandering. Or, walking with purpose toward nowhere. The huge human city was specially designed for that kind of thing.

He was counting the plant-alters (holes in concrete where trees collected the sunlight that powered things, as far as Hiei could tell) when a huge, suffocating aura sat down on his forehead.

He suddenly had a headache.

"_Very_ short," Sensui observed, as though two days hadn't passed between his last comment and this one.

"What do you want?" Hiei asked sullenly.

"What do we all want?" he shot back flatly. "Knowledge."

Hiei glared at his shoes and let the sidewalk slide past. "Go away."

Sensui said, "You are in a foul mood, demon."

"I'm being stalked by a man with no grip on reality," said Hiei. "My week so far has not been excellent."

"I noticed that the fox demon had been paying more attention to the korime lately."

Hiei walked faster. "It's not my business. And don't stalk them. Sick bastard."

"Irritation. Interesting. Evil trait, possibly."

"Don't analyze me."

"Jealousy," Sensui pinpointed it.

"Go to hell."

"You want the girl for yourself," he hypothesized.

Hiei turned sharply and punched Sensui in the stomach. "You disgust me," he spat.

Sensui didn't seem to mind, instead putting one hand over Hiei's fist and holding it to his middle. Hiei was stuck with his arm extended up level with his head.

He hated, hated, hated tall enemies.

Thoughtfully, Sensui corrected himself, "The fox demon."

"Shut up," Hiei said and began to walk away.

And Sensui, who had planned this ahead of time and determined that the conversation had come as far as it needed to, picked the demon up by the shoulder and kissed him.

While Hiei was in shock, Sensui left.

Hiei was having a very, very bad week.

* * *

Hiei stalked into Genkai's home, still in a foul mood from the episode with Sensui.

Yukina poked her head around the doorjamb from the kitchen. "Oh! Hiei! How was your day?"

Hiei worked to unknot the tension between his shoulders. "Uneventful, so far."

"Well. That's unusual. Does it suit you?"

Hiei paused with one hand reaching for his hilt and relaxed. "…No. No, it doesn't."

"Oh." She gave him a bracing, I'll-protect-you-from-the-world smile. "I'm sorry. Maybe tomorrow will be better."

"Maybe."

She finally stepped out into view. Her apron was so long, pink, and frilly that Hiei would be willing to bet that it had once belonged to a member of the Kuwabara household. "Um. Now, I want to ask you a favor…"

Hiei waited as she debated over the appropriated phrasing, and then prompted, "I'll do anything you ask of me."

She flushed and stammered out, "Will you come and taste this?"

Hiei cocked his head to the side and resisted the urge to smile at her. Instead, he nodded and dutifully followed her into the next room.

There was a little box lunch on the table and a small pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

Yukina did an embarrassed, awkward presentation pose, and then let it falter. "Um. I think the rice it alright, but will you try the stir fry, and the apple?"

Hiei took the chopsticks she offered and picked a few stir-fried sugar snap pea pods out of the tangle because he liked them.

Yukina was on tenderhooks.

Hiei chewed, swallowed, paused, and said, "It's fine. Why wouldn't it be fine?"

"No – the apple, too."

Hiei ate a slice of cinnamon-covered apple, and then repeated, "It's fine. Who told you it wasn't fine?"

He looked away, and then murmured, "Well, Kurama said-"

"_Did he insult you_?" Hiei demanded.

"Not – No – I-I don't know!" she said in a rush.

Hiei put the chopsticks down. He invited Yukina to take a seat and found one for himself. He took a deep breath, didn't hunt down and disembowel anything fox-like, and said, "Explain."

She flinched and hid her neck. "He invited me to a picnic."

Hiei nodded to himself. "Picnicking."

"And I said that I would be happy to make lunch for him, and he said no, he'll make it – and I don't know why."

"You're upset because he wants to take you picnicking."

"And – Hiei, do you think that Kurama doesn't think that I'd be a good cook?" she asked fearfully.

Hiei let out a heavy breath. "No. If I had to make a guess, I would say that he was attempting to be romantic."

She let her stiff shoulders fall. "Oh."

"However, I wouldn't be certain. I've never been the victim of Kurama's romanticism."

"I think I – oh. I think I understand, now." She beamed at him. "Thank you so much for your help!"

He stood up and began to leave.

He heard her giggle to herself, "Confusing romanticism." And then aloud, to him, "How funny. There must be a thousand million different ideas about romance. As many as there are people, or demons, or anything. Isn't that such a beautiful thought?"

Hiei_did_ smile at her, just a little. "From a beautiful mind."

She laughed again and started to clean up.

Hiei watched her, and the lingering smiled dried at the thought of Sensui's weird little advances.

* * *

Hiei was sitting in a tree, looking down at an unawares Yukina, gardening in the midday sun.

The presence gave him an iron taste in his mouth.

Sensui, standing on a lower branch with his head level to Hiei's, observed, "It wasn't the fox-demon after all."

"I don't lust after her." Hiei wasn't in the mood for an argument that was only ever one-sided.

The tall man looked down at her, blue hair bleached white in the glow. "You love her."

Hiei considered this. "She said something the other day."

"How unusual."

"Lose the attitude or find another tree."

"No. Your speaking calmly to me is unusual. A good trait."

"If I started a fight, she would hear."

Sensui watched Yukina, face turned in profile to Hiei and eyes serious. Resolutely, he nodded to himself, "I like this peaceful version of you."

"How disturbingly charming."

"Very contradictory, these two versions. What is the name of the irritable one?"

"I'm not insane. They're all me."

"With good traits and evil traits."

"I've maintained that argument from the beginning."

"I definitely would have remembered if you had argued so paradoxical a position."

Hiei studied the dark skin, and wondered what Sensui could possibly be thinking. Or whether he was thinking at all.

The former detective asked, "What did she say?"

"Who?"

"The girl. The korime."

"She said something about everyone having a different idea of the nature of romanticism."

"Interesting topic for you to have brought up with her."

Hiei looked away from Sensui's face and down at Yukina again. "It was because of Kurama."

"And has this any other significance?"

Hiei nodded slowly and squinted up at the sun. "Clearly, your idea of romanticism and mine do not complement each other."

"Clearly," Sensui agreed.

But Hiei still didn't start a fight when Sensui kissed him again and stuck around for a while after.


End file.
